23 Musings

Interesting take on the role of search marketing in travel here from Elisabeth Osmeloski of Search Engine Watch.

Not completely sure I agree that seasonality will disappear, there will surely always be a place for targeting specific seasonal activities and travel times with certain keywords. Yes you may run the campaign full time but it's usually a good idea to ramp it up in the appropriate seasons.

ComScore have released some data showing that clicks on ads on Google were down 7% in January compared to December and flat year-on-year (actually down 12% qtr-on-qtr).

This is pretty astounding news after the growth Google has seen in ad clicks over the last few years. The thought is that this isn't anything fundamentally to do with Google or any competitor taking market share away, rather analysts seem to think this is a sign of the economic uncertainty we are currently seeing. Times are hard so people click less on ads....

What would be interesting is to see the search volume data alongside this click data to see whether searches have declined or stayed the same.

Needless to say Google's shares have taken a bit of a battering today because of this.

As we've all known for a long time measuring the success of online ad campaigns based on the last-click is not really representative of how engaging your advert or link is to users.

Finally Microsoft have announced a solution that may be the beginning of the end for these old advertising techniques.

Engagement Mapping will allow campaigns to be attributed to every click in the journey of a user, one suspects that means they will attribute percentages of sales to each click to end up with a weighted user journey.

This is good news and great progress but what is needed now is a tracking tool that will allow conversions to be tracked in this way across channels such as affiliates, paid search and banners and attribute sales correctly. Only then will online marketers really understand the ROI each channel is delivering.

Now I've just been proved totally wrong. I wrote a while ago that paid search budgets may actually start decreasing (slightly) or stagnating by the end of 2007 in travel as marketers got their heads around affiliates, other new behavioral ways of marketing online and moved back to seeing the huge value in SEO. Also a backlash against paying per click has been expected for some time as marketers try to get everything measurable on a CPA basis.

Seems that's not the case though. Robin Goad of Hitwise has a post which talks about some paid and organic search trends in travel and shopping sites through 2007. One really interesting chart shows that the Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds categories paid search activity actually decreased in 2007 compared to 2006. Travel on the other hand grew by 15-20% during the final three months of the year.

Also, there a great chart showing the trend for paid search traffic to the two categories from late 2006 to the end of 2007.Interesting dip around July 2007 there. Anyone hazard a guess at what that may be? I know it's not the busiest month of the year but that's a hefty drop in paid search spend.

Marketing Sherpa has quizzed 420 top digital marketing experts about what they feel are the most effective methods for advertising online and which give the best ROI.

Search engine optimisation came top, this is not surprising as the ROI is incredible. Some changes take such little effort and can return such amazing gains that SEO will always be the top in a survey like this.

Second came behavioural targeting for adverts, slightly more surprising this one as I wasn't aware the technology was quite there yet to get a better ROI than other ways of advertising such as paid search.

Paid search (or PPC) showed quite a drop in confidence in delivering ROI, however marketers said that the biggest increase in budgets would be in the paid search arena.

And the biggest trend in measurement for this year was voted to be the integration of search and email analytics with your standard onsite analytics thus completing the tracking of the customer journey. Integrating offline and online campaign tracking came second here, now that's a holy grail and I don't believe will be truly possible for a year or so longer.

Interesting study; more available here.

Click Forensics has reported on the 4th quarter of 2007's click fraud volumes. They've seen an increase of 2.4% year on year with the latest quarter registering a massive 16.6% fraudulent clicks. That's the overall figure for the industry average according to their index. The figure for content networks such as Google Adsense sits at 28.3% which is huge!

This is really worrying for anyone with a large paid search campaign. I would have expected these figures to drop due to technological advances from the search engines platforms, instead they seem to be climbing.

A report (here via Marketing Charts) shows that ROI on search marketing has improved in the past year.

What is really interesting is the figures showing ROI improvements by search engine. Google has improved ROI by 7.5% (and it's taken a whopping 76% of the total spend). Yahoo showed a 39% improvement in ROI returned to advertisers since the launch of Panama which is great news for them although coming at a difficult time. MSN interestingly shows the highest clickthrough rate and ROI, it's ROI was 27% greater than the average across other engines.

Just shows why the money is still all in search at the moment. While returns like this are to be had it's going to be tough for anyone to convince me that it's worth moving money out of search into other areas.

Google has announced the launch of demographic targeting for Adwords. This will enable you to show your paid search adverts to more targeted customers and thus drive better qualified traffic to your site. Very useful!

This involves site owners sending Google anonymised user data so that Google can then track these people and serve targeted ads. Surely this has to raise questions for data protection? That said, it is immensely useful to any retailer with data on their visitors!

Paid search (according to Marketing Charts) contributed 57.1% of the total spend on online marketing in the UK. The spend was up 44% year on year for the first six months of 2007 compared with 2006.

This just shows how effective it is and where your marketing pounds should be aimed.

Classifieds has shown good growth as well but this is not as targeted so it's obviously not going to get the same amount of interest as search for the moment.

Reasons for using search are cited to be lead generation, driving direct sales and traffic generation. Great to see sales being the equal top reason for using search. For too long it's been seen as a way to drive traffic and acquire leads, when actually it is the most effective way to drive a direct sale available to online marketers.

Hitwise have released some new figures (found via Marketing Charts) which show that Google managed to account for 66% of all U.S. searches during the four weeks up to the 29th December.

It seems we're set for another year of Google domination in the search engine market. I can't see anyone making a dent in their market share for quite a while (although the Microsoft/FAST deal may make things interesting eventually).

Another interesting stat from the report is that the travel sector has received 22% more traffic from Google from December '06 to December '07 and a 12% increase in traffic from search engines in general.

This shows that for those of us in online travel the search engine is still going to be the major source of qualified traffic. Time to shift that banner spend into something more lucrative like paid search!

Eye tracking company Enquiro Research has produced a report (sponsored by Google no less) which shows the importance for brands to be well represented at the top of both natural and paid search listings.

They say 'There is significant correlation between brands’ appearing in the top organic search and sponsored placements and consumer brand affinity, recall and purchase intent'. Well that's pretty obvious, but it's always nice to have these concepts validated by eye tracking (something that I place great value in as an insight and usability tool).

The most interesting findings are:

This shows that there is definite brand affinity and recall to be gained by being well positioned and using the brand name in your listings. Good advice for travel companies with January coming, I see so many travel listings that are just a destination name and no brand mention at all.

The full report can be found here.

We all know how notoriously difficult paid search is to get right in a highly competitive marketplace. Take car rental, loads of players, very high bid prices and some really proficient PPC campaigns. Need a what to stand out from the crowd? Take the lead from Sixt of Germany then, they've done something very clever with ascii art to make their adverts stand out from the crowd.

This is genius, and they experienced a 40% plus increase in clicks on the campaign! Something that could be applied to many industries!


This campaign has just won an award, more details here.

Tripadvisor have released their figures from a survey called their Traveller Trends Survey. Out of the survey comes some predicitions for 2008 trends that we should all expect to see.

One of the aspects of this (the link above has much more detail) is the TripAdvisor TravelCast. It's a barometer of what’s hot in travel destinations. TripAdvisor engineers have developed a proprietary algorithm that looks at several criteria, including changes in search activity and postings throughout the TripAdvisor site. The TravelCast then predicts the rising stars in travel.

The destinations that are showing as increasing in popularity and expected to be the biggest next year are:

TripAdvisor TravelCast Top Ten World Destinations for 2008
1. Jerba, Tunisia
2. Makandi Bay, Egypt
3. Phangnga, Thailand
4. Kovalam, India
5. Sabaudia, Italy
6. Asilah, Morocco
7. Ko Phangan, Thailand
8. La Plagne, France
9. Yangshuo, China
10. Kotor, Montenegro

TripAdvisor TravelCast Top Ten U.S. Destinations for 2008
1. Sunny Isles Beach, Florida
2. Kitty Hawk (Outer Banks), North Carolina
3. Seward, Alaska
4. Kailua, Hawaii
5. Blue Ridge, Georgia
6. Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania
7. San Marcos, Texas
8. Paso Robles, California
9. Rockport, Texas
10. Copper Mountain, Colorado

Now, this is great insight for online (and offline) travel providers who bid on keywords on search engines. If you are active in pay per click and these destinations match some of your offerings then you should seriously consider looking at the data (clickthroughs, bid positions, bid amounts etc) to see if you can do anything else to get more clicks on these terms. If they are going to be so hot next year it may be worth diverting some of your paid search budget into these destinations over those that don't perform for you currently. Insight like this is highly valuable, especially when it comes from such a big community as TripAdvisor.

Click fraud, the bane of every marketer who deals with paid search, is currently sitting at around 16% of the clicks you may be receiving. The average rate is 16.2% and can be significantly higher on content networks.

The average rate was 13.8% a year ago and 15.8% last quarter so it is rising quite fast:

The average rate of click fraud on content networks such as Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network has risen more sharply:

The graphic below shows a threat map for where click fraud can be generated:

So why this continuing rise? Well as it's coming from content networks I can only guess that it may be being generated by rogue publishers and bloggers who are auto-generating extra clicks on their sites in order to raise their income. This kind of practice could really be affecting your bottom line and giving you a falsely inflated CPA (cost per acquisition) on your paid search campaigns.

Well worth keeping an eye on! And if, like me, you have a large campaign under your remit then contact your agency asap to check that you are receiving any rebates the search engines such as Google provide.

Thanks to Marketing Vox.

Google (GOOG) are getting quite subtle in announcing new products developments these days. They've added a new FAQ to the Adwords Help Center which discusses search adverts appearing on mobile devices. I'm surprised this didn't get shouted about on the Adwords blog...

They're going to be running ads for free on mobile until 19th November, so your ads could be on the small screen right now. Of course you do have to have a mobile viewable landing page linked to from the ad for it to work (which is something I'm glad Google have done so they aren't displaying pointless ads).

You'll be able to opt out at that date.

Interesting analyst opinion from Bear Stearns on Yahoo here. The analyst who prepared the report put Yahoo as one of their top picks, citing such factors as signs that advertising pressure may be decreasing and initial concerns about Panama (the new Yahoo paid search platform) may have been unfounded.

Most interestingly he cites Yahoo as ripe for acquisition, mentioning Microsoft as a possible suitor. he believes that Microsoft have been actively investigating the possibility of acquiring Yahoo for some time. He also said that he could see any buyout price being at approximately double the current Yahoo share price. Now that has to be tempting for Yahoo!

If this ever happened (which I'm not yet convinced of) it would turn Microsoft into a major player in the online world, instantly buying them a serious amount of advertising real estate and with the potential to compete with Google Adwords in the paid search arena.

Now American Airlines has sued Google for allowing other advertisers to use it's trademarks as keywords in pay per click advertising. The airline accuses Google of selling the right to use American Airlines' trademarks and service marks or "words, phrases, or terms confusingly similar to those marks" to competitors who then direct searchers to their own web sites.

This isn't the first time Google has faced such a lawsuit. Geico sued Google for the same reasons some time ago and lost, and apparently other cases are on the backburner.

This confuses me a little... We use Google extensively for PPC advertising and our highest converting keywords are our brand terms (as you'd expect). Every so often we find a rogue affiliate or competitor bidding on our brand name and we always report this to Google and they remove the offending adverts for us. To enable this kind of response we had to register our brand terms with Google. They don't really police it actively but they do take down offending ads when asked.

So if the above is possible, why don't American Airlines just ask for them to be taken down? I'm guessing that they expect Google to do this automatically and to not even allow the ads to appear in the first place. To enable that would be a hugely complex and time consuming development for Google and a fundamental change to the Adwords system. I'm guessing Google would rather not have to do that. But if American Airlines lose (like Geico) then surely Google should not be taking down our competitors ads (as it's not been deemed illegal)?

Who knows! What I do know is that brand keyword advertising is very lucrative, it returns excellent ROI and is any search marketers meat and drink. Any threat to the way brand term advertising works could have a massive impact on Googles Adwords revenue. If lawsuits like this keep cropping up it is possible Google could ban advertising on trademarked terms for all to stem the tide of subpoenas, that would make PPC a much less attractive proposition!

Yahoo Search Marketing have published some tips for creating good landing pages that convert here on their blog.

Here's the lowdown, and very useful they are two (although maybe a little basic for some):

1. Connect the search experience to the landing page experience
   Wherever possible, use the same language on your landing pages as you do in your ads. It’s a real disconnect when you click on an ad that reads, “Online Conversion Rate Counter” only to land on a page selling a “Conversion Calculating Service.”
   
   
2. Integrate your landing page into your site
   Some advertisers make the mistake of building stand-alone landing pages for certain keywords that are more-or-less “divorced” from the rest of their sites. This can make your business seem sketchy to potential customers, who you want to be able to trust you with their credit card info. A consistent experience across all of your pages and product offerings can help create a more convincing experience. (More on this below.)
   
   
3. Gain their trust
   Use trusted, third-party security providers and make sure their badges and icons are clearly visible.
   
   
4. Offer tips and suggestions
   How can potential customers best use the product? If you’re selling steaks, offer a steak au poivre recipe. There’s a potential for up- and cross-sell here, as well. Perhaps monsieur would enjoy a nice bottle of cabernet sauvignon with his tender, juicy filet mignon, oui? Just don’t go crazy with it, mon ami. (See 5 and 6, below.)
   
   
5. Stay on target
   If your ad specifies John Deere tractors, make sure all of your tractors for sale on that page are John Deere tractors. In other words, if I had been looking for Caterpillar bulldozers I’d have clicked on an ad for them instead
   
   
6. Cut the clutter
   Your landing page should not be too generic and cluttered. This ties in with the tip above. If your ad is for discount wholesale 7Up, don’t clutter the page up with other un-colas. This helps keep the lead focused.
   
   
7. Ban the bling
   Your landing page should be cleanly and attractively designed, but avoid distractions like music or other audio, animations and revolving logos. These can distract prospective customers from their purpose, which is to buy the product or service that they need, hopefully from you. Again, keep ‘em focused on the task.
   
   
8. Give them something to do
   A little interactivity can help keep people engaged. For some products, especially big-ticket items, things like video testimonials and 360-degree tours may be good sales aids. Just let customers decide whether or not they want to view them by giving them control. And remember Tip 7: Keep the bling to a minimum.
   
   
9. Write right
   Language counts. Think of your landing page as a salesperson in a showroom. What would a salesperson say to a prospect to help “get to yes?”

Great tips for anyone either building landing pages or directing traffic to them!

It seems Yahoo has fundamental problems in their ad sales team (at least that's what I think).

Yet another quarterly profit report that's down on last year and again it's blaming sales of display adverts on the drop. However, everyone is reporting huge investment in online marketing and massive growth in this area. Yahoo have a major piece of internet real estate but just don't seem able to capitalise on it.

I realise a lot of the increased online ad spend is going into paid search with the likes of Google, but display should be Yahoo's meat and drink and shouldn't be an area they are losing money on. Yahoo provides masses of eyeballs for banner adverts but it seems the money is being held back to be spent elsewhere.

The solution? Capitalise on what you've already got! Huge traffic, massive amounts of quality content, huge amounts of page views. Create brand centric areas which can be sold for large amounts of advertising dough and fix Yahoo 360, turn it into a proper social network. Yahoo still has a huge community who use Messenger, Mail, Flickr etc. All these users have a Yahoo profile which could be a 360 profile, fix the social networking aspects (or build them if they don't exist) and you could get some loyalty back which in turn will attract the ad dollars back.

Yahoo has launched a new display advertising product called SmartAds, this allows marketers to offer ads that are customised based not just on the usual demographic data (age, gender, location) but also on their online activities. This type of behavioural marketing is popular but Yahoo have thrown in a new twist which makes their SmartAds very powerful.

SmartAds combines Yahoo's demographic, geographic and behavioral targeting capabilities with a new ad assembly platform that allows the customised ads to be created in real-time. Yahoo will get different backgrounds, logos and other features from the creative agencies that can be re-configured with ad copy based on who is seeing the ad and what they are interested in.

Yahoo give some examples of how this could be used:

'For instance, instead of just seeing a generic ad for a Toyota Prius, a woman in San Francisco who conducts research on hybrid cars on Yahoo Autos could be served an ad for a local San Francisco dealer with information on the types of Priuses that are in stock and the purchase price. The ad, which is configured on the fly, could also feature a background color targeted for women in her age range, as well as a Golden Gate Bridge logo.

Someone searching for flights between Dallas and Phoenix could be served an ad, for example, with specific up-to-the-minute fares from a particular airline along with a button that says "buy now," all within the ad.'

This turns your usual, run of the mill banner adverts into a vehicle that can drive direct response, almost akin to paid search. This tool has the potential to make a huge difference to Yahoo's bottom line if it gets adopted by the major creative agencies. Used cleverly this tool will help businesses increase both brand awareness (something that all banner ads are good for) and also drive incremental business (something not many banner ads are good for).

What's the betting Google counter with a new display advertising tool in the very near future now that DoubleClick are on board??